Sports fan site looks to score with ad revenue

This series follows the first cohort of JOLT, an early-stage accelerator program at MaRS Discovery District dedicated to building high-growth Web and mobile startups that promise to transform the way consumers and businesses interact with technology. This week, tout.it learns the power of advertising revenue in market success.

It was an interrupted conversation in a bar about a sports event that inspired Keith Loo to do something for sports fanatics worldwide. As Mr. Loo, chief executive and co-founder of tout.it, and his business partners Addo Smajic and Miroslav Jeliaskoff discovered there are 17 million über sports fans in North America alone who spend on average 14 hours a week online. Worldwide the number is closer to 500 million.

The team has been working on a prototype of a social media site specifically geared to sports fanatics of the world. Unlike other sites, which tend to focus on a single sport, tout.it covers all sports, providing a forum for conversations that only the most die-hard fans will appreciate, from trading and free market news to individual player performance. And they now believe their concept is ready for prime time.

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Finding the fans and getting them to test the waters was the easy part, Mr. Loo says. “We’re very confident in our product. We know so many people want to use it.”

The challenge they worked on at JOLT, in part, was execution: getting a product from ground zero to market readiness in four months. “With only three of us that means a lot of time management. There was only so much we could do within a finite amount of time,” Mr. Loo says.

Equally important was creating a viable revenue model — a site that would bring on advertisers. “Ultimately the monetization strategy for this site will be advertising,” says Michael Garrity, JOLT entrepreneur in residence. “The only reason sports is so prominent on television in prime time is that ads drive content.”

While advertisers do gravitate to sports audiences, it’s up to tout.it to convince them the site is a worthy investment. “The challenge will be getting enough evidence that the site is catering to the needs of the sports-fanatic audience,” Mr. Garrity says. “Advertisers will want to see the value of its target zone over other sites.”

In other words, tout.it needs to get the traction to show people are using it and more and more are joining, he says. “Without the advertisers you can’t show outside investors you can scale it to make it economically viable. It’s a big chasm they need to cross.”

Mr. Loo says tout.it’s strategic focus includes building partnerships and sponsorships with the advertising community. “We realize a lot of people are fighting for those dollars. If we hit our target of 100,000 users by end of October — and signs are we will — then we have something to really show [advertisers] and investors.”

“This site is clearly targeted at sports fanatics across many sports. I have every confidence they have the focus to get it right. And when they do, it will provide evidence to drive advertisers and then investors will follow,” Mr. Garrity says.